"If you go away, which I know you will"
2008-01-12, 7:40 p.m.

from my professor for unbelief in america next semester . . .

"You will notice that you have an assignment for the first week. You will read the introductory material in your two survey texts. And then I have asked you to read the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian "Old Testament." I am going to try to introduce the subject of unbelief by discussing with you one of the oldest pieces of literature in any language or culture, the Book of Job.

As I trust that most of you know, Job was, in the words of God, a "perfect man," God's most faithful and obedient servant. Yet, the Lord makes a wager with Satan, who bets God that he can force even this perfect man to denounce his belief in God. As a result of the wager, truly dreadful things happen to Job.

The story of his ordeal and his response to it raises as poignantly as it can be done the question of "why bad things happen to good people." More pointedly, it frames perfectly the question of how evil can exist in a world created by God. We will, you all and I, on Wednesday and Friday of next week, try to have a conversation with the afflicted man about the problems that arise from trying to believe in God. In that discussion I hope that we can begin to develop a vocabulary of terms and issues that surround the study of belief and unbelief in God.

So. The assignment is to read the Book of Job, all of it. It is an extended poem, a truly magnificent human achievement with which all educated people should be acquainted."